On Thursday, 25 April 2013 at 22:36:39 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
wrote:
Nowhere in here am I suggesting that ref itself be treated
differently, and
nothing I'm describing really has anything to do with scope.
- Jonathan M Davis
Okay, we're on the same page then. I was using 'scope' only as
the '@newattr'. And I agree with your logic, and I understand the
conflict with the existing templated 'auto ref's.
I also thought of the trick mentioned by Timon, where the
compiler infers the need or lack thereof for the value/reference
type in templates based on what things are done within the
function body. But as you said, figuring out the rules for making
the compiler smart enough to choose the right one seems like a
hard task. If it forwards to another 'auto ref' template
parameter, it needs to descend into that template, determine
*its* type of parameter, and then assign the type of its own
parameter accordingly.
It would be great if that proved to be a workable solution, not
unlike the desirability of the compiler automatically determining
if a class member function should be virtual or not. I don't know
all of the cases which must be considered. Certainly if the
parameter is assigned to, it must be 'ref', since the calling
function will need the change. If the parameter is returned as
'auto ref', I guess then it must certainly become 'auto ref' as
it is currently implemented for templates. If it is passed to a
'ref', then I would say it must be 'ref' itself. If it is passed
to 'auto ref', it confuses me... nor do I know what other cases
must be considered.
